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Upon first viewing of Teekyu, the overwhelming feeling one gets is “What the heck did I just watch?!” The one thing you cannot accuse Teekyu of having is filler – there's no time for that! It's joke after joke after joke to the point where you need to focus on the subtitles 100% to even understand what's going on. The speed associated with this anime continues when you find out that the time spanned from first announcement to first broadcast was only eight weeks. Eight weeks. The manga itself was published only five months prior; which is still pretty rapid a release.

The major stumbling block for the show is in the animation. It's all very well and good claiming that this show is the fastest anime adaptation ever (which the manga's publisher Earth Star Entertainment constantly hammers into our heads!) but if the animation quality is questionable, it cheapens the logistical achievement. As a result, the character proportions and detailing keeps changing as fast as the dialogue. Some shots look amateurish, others look awful or inconsistent and rarely does it look 'good'. This is the compromise one has to face when you wish to put speed in front of style.

So to sum up, if you're looking for a quick fix of laughter from this anime season, you could do worse. If you're not bothered by art quality and would wish to get your jollies from action-based comedy then you're in luck here. Just don't expect anything close to Prince of Tennis level detail about the sport which this show tries to emulate!

A regular day at school for Saki Watanabe who just finally graduated into the Unified Class where the most gifted students hone their skills of telekinesis. Call it the “Cursed Power” or “Gods' Power”, the world Saki lives in is populated with people blessed with this talent. From the looks of her hometown surrounded by nature, the alien life forms populating it, lack of technology and exotic architectural designs, one would assume Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World) is set in another world, but it is actually taking place right here on Earth – a thousand years from now, that is.

In the first scene, we are shown a boy walking around a decidedly 21st century-like city and killing innocent bystanders like mere water balloons, liquifying their bodies in split seconds. Immediately switching to a playful scene of kids playing on a peaceful hill at twilight a thousand years later, the anime sets the tone for its main mystery: What the hell happened in the last thousand years?

Although things look peaceful at first glance in Saki's village, there is a strong sense that a very dark truth lies behind the façade. Before children can graduate to the Unified Class, they have to become awakened through the touch of a Blessing Spirit, a phenomenon similar to puberty in the sense that not all children experience it at the same age. Unlike puberty, however, not everyone awakens. Shortly before awakening, Saki had eavesdropped on her parents' conversation about how she had yet to awaken and heard her mother on the brink of tears screaming that she did not want to lose another one of her children. The seed of doubt was planted as she began to second guess her parents' reassuring words about how Awakening is only a matter of time...

On her first day in class, her friends from Harmony Elementary greet her and tease her about how she's the last one to graduate. After asking them how she could be the last one when there were still plenty of others left in her previous class, she is met with a somber silence from the group who hastily bends the conversation to another topic.

Just what happens to those the Blessing Spirit does not visit? Why did the new student, Amano Reiko, suddenly disappear from class after showing dismal results in her studies? Why is the Ogres and Karmic Demons class teaching them to obediently remain within the confines of the Sacred Barrier and, if they should ever lure an Ogre toward the village, that they should prioritize suicide for the greater benefit of the village? Is there any truth behind the stories of the “Trickster Cat” eating little kids, or that there are a bunch of graves in the courtyard of Harmony Elementary?

Shin Sekai Yori loses no time in captivating its audience with its setting rife with unsettling mysteries. The gloomy atmosphere, subtle soundtrack with a certain religious tone and recurring scenes taking place at dusk as the darkness is about to set in help us along throughout every episode as our curiosity and desire to uncover the truth intensifies. Tantalizing tidbits of the past are gradually shown to us as the group of children become increasingly curious about their world and come ever closer to their trip up Tone River where all the answers will be revealed to them.

… And that's when things go downhill. Granted, at the time of this writing, only episodes 1 through 6 are available, and the anime is planned to have at least 25 episodes, so things have ample time to get back on track, but episodes 5 and 6 represent the biggest shift in focus and pacing I've seen in a long time. Not only are the animation and art style of episode 5 so different the characters are barely recognizable, the plot also takes a sudden turn that tramples over the so perfectly built up tension of the first few episodes to develop into a story arc that feels rushed and disconnected.

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